Capsule reviews of new movie releases

2012/05/10 09:39:29 @Entertainment News Headlines - Yahoo! News

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are snuggled warmly in their comfort zone in this chilly horror-comedy, their eighth collaboration as director and star, respectively, and their weakest by far. You don't need to know a thing about the "Dark Shadows" TV series that provides the inspiration. Tonally, thematically, visually, you've seen this movie before, with its oddball characters, skies in varying shades of gray and a foreboding sense of gothic mystery. It's actually a wonder that Depp hasn't played a vampire before; still, his long-undead Barnabas Collins, who's been buried alive for nearly two centuries and suddenly finds himself back in his insular Maine hometown in 1972, fits squarely within his well-honed on-screen persona. He thinks he's quite the charmer, but he's actually a bit awkward, and that contradiction provides the main source of humor. Or at least, it's supposed to. The script from Seth Grahame-Smith ("Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter") allows its family full of weirdoes to shine, but too often is crammed with fish-out-of-water gags as Barnabas struggles to make sense of the time in which he's found himself. He struggles to understand modern romance as he courts the family's delicate, wide-eyed nanny (Bella Heathcote) and tries to fit in by smoking pot with the local hippies. Ho ho! "Dark Shadows" feels too languid, and bogged down as it is with an obsessive eye for costumes and period detail rather than offering anything resembling an engaging story. And by the time Burton finally puts his visual effects skills to their best use, in a climactic showdown between Barnabas and the witch who cursed him (Eva Green), it's too late. With Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter and Jackie Earle Haley. PG-13 for comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking. 116 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
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